Previous Pilgrims

I am walking down a broad, stony, rocky riverbed that is almost dry. A tiny stream runs circuitously in the deepest part of the riverbed. It is hardly more than a foot wide. My brother and I are picking our way with rod and staff, among the ancient stones, using great care.

“This is the way I came before; little has changed.” he says.

I studied him, so handsome in life and now in this, even more so. I see his cheek, still damp from the tears I licked there as he lay dying; licked them to get the last of the salty essence into me that made us brothers.

There is a rushing of wind. Leaves and dust are blown up. I feel like laughing. Our clothes and hair are blown; our eyes are squinted for protection. I look up from my job; writing things down, that demands so much attention. I see a pillar of water, then another and another.

“First the wind, then the rain.” I say.

The pillars of water are twelve feet high, revolving and about eighteen inches in diameter, no greater at top or bottom. I reach out to touch one as it moves by me.

“Don’t touch the water.” he says. Always the big brother.

There is graciousness in their movements, and as I touch the side, it pauses, as if waiting to be caressed. Water splashes out onto my clothing and shoes, and on the dry rocks and makes them shine, but when I remove my hands, they are not wet. The columns move on, gracefully, purposefully, effortlessly – with intent, as if following a path. They weave among the rocks and stones, and seem especially interested in those cairns and pillars stacked by previous pilgrims.

Their movements disturb not a single stone, although the power of these energized, kinetically happening, spontaneously generated columns of water is obvious. They pick up huge boulders, dozens of them, inspect them and set them down as they were for centuries. Only a light click of stone on stone can be heard, and this clicking has a musical ring to it, and a subtle, pleasing rhythm. There is meaning to it I cannot ken, like a code in song – more – it was as if a lock was being opened and tumbler after tumbler fell in sequence as the combination was advanced.

Many years ago, at the dock where my brother kept a small sailboat, some birds (I forget what kind) had built a nest into the gravel right on the quay. At first, I almost stepped on it. (“Killdeer”, he says now, “that’s what they’re called, Killdeer.”) It was so undistinguished. To distract me from the nest and eggs, the mother flew away as prey, a charade of injury to which I had no key.

The nest was but a saucered depression in the number six yard stone, yet the closer I looked the more evident, frighteningly evident it became that this was the work of a master mason that had no need of a compass or square, mallet or rule. Every stone, every pebble, every piece of dust and down had been laid so, just so into that concave depression.

“We’re almost there now.” he says. “Let’s keep going.”

H. Scott Derkin

Copyright 2018

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Author: hsderkin

H. Scott Derkin, winner of the prestigious Delizon Publishers Annual Short Story Competition in 2013 lives and works in Toledo, Ohio with his wife Carol and a scruffy miniature poodle mix named Dylanbob. By not taking in to account his shortcomings, Carol has managed to stay with him for 48 years. Derkin pursues his livelihood there in a prosaic trade. He may be found summers at the helm of his sailboat, making passage around the islands of western Lake Erie; and in the time not taken up by working, writing and sailing, Derkin might be found playing drums and recording blues, country and rock & roll music with his friends.
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